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Date: 5/23/2023
EASTHAMPTON – During a workshop session on May 16, the Easthampton School Committee named the district’s Director of Special Education Sarah Mochak as one of the candidates to be interviewed for the interim superintendent position.
The decision to move forward with an interim superintendent comes after West Springfield interim Superintendent Vito Perrone had his offer rescinded and Dr. Erica Faginski-Stark withdrew from consideration for the permanent superintendent seat. Since then, the committee worked with the Massachusetts Association of School Committees to decide on four external candidates while the job was also posted internally.
Mochak joins external candidates Roland Joyal, Marlene DiLeo, Mary Jane Rickson and Maureen Benienda as the finalists for the interim position. All five candidates are scheduled to be interviewed on June 3, 4 and 5.
In the committee’s discussion, Mayor Nicole LaChapelle said she was interested in interviewing Mochak for the position.
“I would like Sarah to be considered as a candidate out of respect of her knowledge of the district as well as her experience,” she said.
When committee member Ben Hersey asked what would happen if she was offered the position, Chair Cynthia Kwiecinski explained that her current position would have to be posted and filled.
Mochak has served as director of special education in Easthampton since 2015 first in an interim role before taking on the permanent position. Prior to that she was the special education coordinator for Easthampton’s elementary schools for 10 years and an intensive special needs teacher at White Brook Middle School for eight years before that.
Along with Mochak, the committee also received another application from another external candidate, Tony Serio, the former head of school/superintendent at the Gilbert School in Winsted, Connecticut. However, the committee did not agree to offer him an interview.
Kwiecinski said she was hesitant to offer an interview to Serio.
“I don’t have a resume, it also came in beyond our acceptance date, even beyond our internal candidate date,” Kwiecinski said.
Member Marin Goldstein agreed and said the committee needed to move the process forward. The rest of the committee agreed but offered thanks to Serio for applying.
After the candidate discussion, the committee also workshopped questions to ask each candidate during the interviews before deciding upon 14 total questions, with each member of the committee asking two questions, including the two new members who will be appointed by a convention of the School Committee and City Council on May 31.
One concern Goldstein brought up in the question workshop was if the questions would be released to the public.
“These are questions that we’re asking of our candidates, I understand transparency and I understand our desire to share information with the community, but these are the interview questions that we’re going to be asking our candidates, we don’t generally post those for the candidates to know in advance of the interview,” he said.
While Kwiecinski said she saw where Goldstein was coming from, she said the questions being publicly released would happen regardless of if the committee agreed to make them public.
“I don’t see a problem with us doing this, it’s a little different from when we did the superintendent interviews, but it’s an interim candidacy so it’s different anyway. We probably would get 10 or 15 requests for the questions, so we might as well take care of that now,” she said. “We’re right on both counts but I think it might just save some frustration.”
Committee member Megan Harvey noted that after the first interview, releasing the questions would be a moot point.
The committee unanimously agreed to approve the 14 questions for the interim superintendent interviews.